Tech Forum

Given that one of the missions of the Church is to spread the gospel message to as many people as possible, I think the Church is missing an opportunity to expand its' reach by not doing some basic optimization of Mormon.org. There are many low effort, high impact, basic SEO best-practices that could be implemented in short order. In my opinion, this should be a high priority for our SEO department to get these simple measures in place since Mormon.org is the site geared towards helping non-members discover information about the Church (and search is a key component of how people discover information).

I'd be happy to provide specific suggestions on areas for improvement. Thank you for your consideration.

I assume SEO = Search Engine Optimization?

RussellHltn wrote:I assume SEO = Search Engine Optimization?

That is correct.

Well... the church got some pretty high marks and exposure in the SEO world from Avinash Kaushik - Here is a youtube link from his presentation at SES 2010

Title = LDS (mormon) Church knows SEO with Avinash Kaushik, Google, at SES Chicago 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjWInquqhMA

I realize that 2010 is so last year, but I remembered seeing this when it came out... it may have been on this forum

Just as a note, SEO is listed as a skill in the User Skills area under the Projects of LDSTech.

I agree that there is some work that could be done as far as SEO goes. The Church's website is gorgeous and has many elements of SEO. Obviously more can always be done. What I think would be great is for the Church to produce hundreds or even thousands of additional pages on lds.org and/or mormon.org that answer questions like "who is God?" "who is Jesus Christ?" and other meaningful content like "how to pray" "how to read the Bible" etc. This way, there would be hundreds to thousands of more entry ways for people looking for answers to the questions.

FYI, for these three search terms alone, there are the following amount of searches a month in the U.S. alone:
who is God - 5,400 searches/month
who is Jesus Christ - 1,900 searches/month
how to pray - 6,600 searches/month
how to read the Bible - 2,200 searches/month

That is a total of 16,100 searches a month! There is a lot of potential to spread the gospel by helping people come to the Church's website through many keywords. It could bless the lives of thousands upon thousands.

As noted in the post before yours that there is an opportunity for you to volunteer for Projects that need those with SEO skills.

jdlessley wrote:As noted in the post before yours that there is an opportunity for you to volunteer for Projects that need those with SEO skills.

I can volunteer for this SEO work. Just let me know and how can I help. Thanks

jorojam02 wrote:I can volunteer for this SEO work. Just let me know and how can I help. Thanks

Check out the wiki articles for more information. The one titled Getting started on a community project is the one you should start with.

Edit: It took me a while to realize we are talking about an in-house project and not a community project. But by using the information in the wiki articles you may be able to find someone who can let you know whether they are willing to accept community help.

Yes, SEO is definitely needed on Mormon.org. Specifically, it should show up in a search for the term "Mormonism." "Mormonism" was a trending search on Yahoo! Search a couple of weeks ago, but Mormon.org did not appear in the results. LDS.org didn't appear in the results then either, but it appears now!